Literacy news
Problem solved - advice column answering a mother's question about what language to speak at home
19 Sep 2009
A London mother sent a letter to the Guardian's advice columnist Annalisa Barbieri, asking for advice about her soon-to-be-born baby's language development in a bilingual household. Annalisa sought the expert opinions of FouFou Savitzky, principal lecturer in family learning at London Southbank University, and Charmian Kenner, lecturer in educational studies at Goldsmiths, University of London.
The gist of what Annalisa discovered was that children will not get confused by learning more than one language in the household; up until about the age of 10 or 12, children learn foreign languages almost as if they were one big language. As children, people process language in the frontal lobe of the brain, but later on, the brain has to "scramble" to find storage space somewhere else.
Importantly, learning two or more languages can help a child's development in his mother tongue. Kenner said it was important for you to speak to the baby in a language you feel is natural.
Frou Frou pointed out that, "It's also important that the baby gets good models of whichever languages are going to be used (so not French dotted with English, for example). Although consistency is important, i.e. one parent speaks one language to the child, that doesn't mean the child should never hear the parent using another language or that there aren't social situations during which you may decide it would be politic to use the other language."
(The Guardian, 19 September 2009)
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